Raggedy Ann & Rags Baby Shower Cake

 A recent request for a Raggedy Ann baby shower cake caught me by surprise.  Was Raggedy Ann still popular after the whole Annabelle horror movie thing?   

I looked around for inspiration, but most of the cakes freaked me out (too creepy).  Then I found an inspiration cake that had Raggedy Ann sitting on top of the cake.  I was going to buy an actual doll to place on top, but I couldn't find the right size.  So I ended up just making one out of fondant.  How does my Raggedy Ann look?  Hope she doesn't look too creepy!

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To make the doll, I started with the lower body.  For the legs I rolled out two sausage shapes from white fondant and wrapped a thin strip of red fondant around the legs.  I used the PME Strip Cutter #1 to cut the strips, but you can just do it with a long razor blade.  To make the shoes, I flatten tear drop shapes from black fondant.  I used a ball tool to make a depression in the shoe and then stuck a leg to each shoe and glued it in place with a dab of water.   

For the body I mixed some CMC powder to leftover brown fondant and made a crude body shape.  The CMC powder makes the fondant harden to a rock-like consistency and allows it to support the weight of the head and dress without collapsing.  The tooth pick is for extra support and to attach the head to the body.  I added a loop of blue fondant  around the base of the body to help the dress flare out.  Also notice that I added some bloomers to the legs. I thought they looked cute, but sadly most of the bloomers got covered up by the dress.

Next I made the dress.  I rolled out a circle of blue fondant and added the tiny red flowers and a white dot to the center of each flower.  Then I simply draped the circle over the body of the doll.  I added tube shaped pieces of blue fondant for the sleeves/arms and stuck the red flowers on the sleeves in random places.  I added an apron with a frilly edge and blobs of copper tinted fondant for the hands and neck.

Then came the hard part - the head and face.  I tried so hard to make her look friendly.  The eyes, mouth and nose are fondant, and I drew on the eyebrows and lashes with an edible black marker.  I put too many eyelashes on, but once they were on I couldn't remove them.  I also added CMC powder to the fondant used to make the head, and once it dried a little, I placed it on the body.  

The hair came next.  I cut out a bunch of red fondant strips.

I moistened the head with some water, and just started placing the strips.  It was very time consuming.

And here is the (almost) finished doll.  Later on I removed the second white dot on her eye because some people thought it looked strange.  I also miscalculated the placement of the eyebrows.  I should have put them closer to her eyes because the hair/bangs covered them up.  Oh well, can't fix it now.  I also added some fondant buttons to the apron and some frilled fondant around her neck.

I also thought she looked a little lonely on top of the cake, so I added her dog, Rags.  I used this YouTube video to make the dog.  You can see a tool at the lower right corner of the picture below.  This was what I used to cut into the fondant to make it look like "hair".  It is actually a woodcarving tool.  Clay, woodcarving, and pottery tools work great for fondant.

Rag's neck looks a little thin, but once I added the collar it looked okay.

The toppers were finished ahead of time, so on decorating day the cake went together pretty easily.  I used a triangle cutter to make the bunting flags that hung around the cake.  I made them in different patterns and colors.

Once all the flags were cut, I draped strings of fondant around the cake, and then placed the flags below it.  As a final step I added the red flower buttons, to give it a more girly touch.

Last step was to place the topper.  I set the topper on a blanket of white fondant so it would be easier to put on and take off.  There is also parchment paper under the blanket so the blue buttercream wouldn't get on the topper.  I wanted to keep it clean just incase the mom-to-be wanted to keep the topper.

Here is a closeup of the topper.  

Hope she likes it!

Happy Decorating,

Carol